Another tea partier ignorant of the Constitution

Bocephus, fired as the Monday Night Football balladeer after comparing Obama to Hilter, plays the martyr.

“After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision,” he wrote. “By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of *The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It’s been a great run.”

*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Last I checked, ESPN didn’t pass a law prohibiting the playing of Hank’s song.

Fred Shuttlesworth mattered more than Steve Jobs

I’m sorry Steve Jobs died. He was a master innovator whose contributions were significant (though not as great as Willis Carrier, inventor of air conditioning, which made the New South possible).

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth also died Wednesday. Here’s what he did with his life:

He was brutally beaten by a mob, sprayed with city fire hoses, and arrested by police 35 times. He was blown out of his bed by a bomb set by the Ku Klux Klan, which also bombed his church. …

Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956, when he began violating Birmingham’s bus segregation law. He risked his life again and again to pave the way for a minority’s civil rights.

“That Fred Shuttlesworth did not become a martyr was not for lack of trying,” said his biographer, Andrew Manis, author of “A Fire You Can’t Put Out.” ‘’There was not a person in the civil rights movement who put himself in the position of being killed more often than Fred Shuttlesworth.”

Jobs should be remembered. Shuttlesworth should be revered.

The Malcontent suggests …

My favorite Beatle is the subject of a Martin Scorsese documentary tonight on HBO.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Gun

The question before a three-judge panel for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta Thursday is whether Georgia’s prohibition on firearms in places of worship conflicts with the promise of religious freedom in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

GeorgiaCarry.org, which brought the initial lawsuit, believes religious institutions, not Georgia law, should dictate if firearms are allowed inside, and they point to accounts of shootings in churches as examples of why guns are needed even while worshiping.

Related articles

• Gun rights group argues for right to bring guns to worship (ajc.com)